OK new mixers, this is your thread to ask any questions you want of the DIY eJuice community. All posts are allowed, but we still encourage you to use the sidebar and search features before asking any questions.
- Placing your first DIY order and want to make sure you have all you need?
- Not sure about how to mix your first bottle?
- Want to get started but aren't sure how?
- Any other questions? ... then this is the thread for you. FWIW, the answers to the first three questions will eventually be found in the wiki (still in development); link at the top of the page.
Ask away!
I've made a decent few different juices now, and two have had a similar problem while none of the rest have - for the two in question, when I drip them, there's a god awful holy fuck horrible chemical taste at first, but then after a hit or two, it tastes perfectly fine/like it should have.
If you just pulse it a few times after first dripping and get that bad taste out, it's perfectly enjoyable. If you drip through the drip tip, directly onto the coil and wicks, or solely onto the wicks directly avoiding the coil altogether, you'll still get the same effect for the first pull - that horrible acrid taste.
Anyone have any idea wtf is going on with those two juices? For the record, they're:
NN Peaches & Cream 5%
NN Mango Cream 5%
NN Patchouli Vanilla 1%
and
NN Banana Cream Pie 8%
NN Patchouli Vanilla 2%
thanks :]
That's a lot of flavoring. Typical juice is ~8-14% total. Are you counting drops or measuring by weight?
Measuring by volume, and each of the juices mentioned were total 10-11% flavor, 3mg nic, so the rest is roughly 82ish% VG
How should I clean old bottles? I have a bunch of empties from stuff I've bought that I'd like to use for my diy journey, plastic and glass. Can I get away with rinsing them out in my sink and letting them air dry? Is there a safer way?
Second part, I've heard when cleaning syringes I should use distilled water. How necessary is it to clean out a syringe if I'm going to use it for a single flavor/pg/vg/nic?
For bottle cleaning- Hot water works well, Alcohol & Salt works better for persistent lingering odors.
You don't NEED to clean syringes if they are dedicated to one flavoring; but I'd still say its best practice to give it a quick rinse after use and before storage. Distilled Water, Alcohol or PG all work to this end, just wipe the needle before drawing from the rinse cup/basin(helps prevent mixing flavors into the rinse) and empty the syringe into a sink.
I would like to know about the bottles as well. I have 30 (give or take a few) 10ml plastic bottles of mixes that just didn't work out.
As for the syringes. Everything I use has its own syringe that I put away in a labeled ziplock bag when I'm done with it. I've been diy for about 2 months now, and the only syringes I've cleaned have been the flavors that will crack plastic (peach, banana, cinnamon, etc.) I just flush them out a few times with tap water.
I'm new too! I had a bunch of glass dropper cobalt blue bottles sitting around that I want to use. I googled around a bit and came up with this method that worked well.
I mixed distilled water and about %20 cheap vodka (I always have this stuff airing around to wash rdas and tanks anyway) and after disassembly slowly brought the whole batch to a boil.
Then, proceeded in typical dumbass fashion to realize labels were still attached so I took everything out, removed gummy labels and spent a long time fighting with the gummy adhesive.
More googling led me to apply the bonehead maneuver of applying a tiny bit of wd40 to a paper towel to remove the adhesive which worked like a charm, but left wd40 on the bottle. A drop of dish soap and quick hand scrub under tap water seemed to get rid of that.
Finally boiled them again in distilled water and vodka then set out to air dry. Reflected on why I didn't buy some glass bottles. Wondered if I was going to die from tiny amounts of wd40 that might somehow linger.
It all seemed so simple when I started.
I soak might in hot water, peel off and use a magic eraser to de-goo it. Works great, not chemicals. Give a good rinse though because even though i say "no chemicals", i learned recently that magic erasers are made of melamine which is not for ingestion.
I was about to head-scratch on "no chemicals" and point out that there's no actual magic (unless you use Card's definition) in that marker! lol! So +1 on the magic eraser then, good to know, since this is a question that I bet comes up a lot for new people looking to use old vendor bottles.
How do I go about getting a drop out of a syringe? I use steady, light pressure, but the moment the plunger breaks the friction, it shoots out a small stream of flavor. It's really fucking up all my CA additions to fruit flavors :/
I have a question about Koolada if someone wouldn't mind answering?
I've ordered some TFA Koolada 10% from Chef's Vapour and on their page it says try 4 drops per 4ml.
So, 1 drop per ml suggested. Using the assumption that 1 drop is 0.033ml that works out around 3.3% unless my maths is terrible. After reading around that sounds a little high, most recipes use between 0.5 and 2%.
Is there a hard and fast rule when using Koolada? I'm going to try 1% and see what happens but some advice would be appreciated. I'd prefer to use a % over "add a few drops" as I'm mixing by weight and want to be able to recreate a recipe as consistently as possible.
Most recipes I've seen use 1% or less. I'd recommend starting at a low % on a small batch (such as .5%) and work your way up or down depending on the flavor you are looking for. I've also heard good results of a mix of 2% Koolada and 2% menthol. I've never made this and can't comment, but it seems to have been well received for those menthol fans. I've found 3-5ml batches work best for testing as you don't want to get stuck with a 15 or 30ml bottle of something that is unpleasant.
Your maths is terrible. ;)
0.033ml x 30 drops (assuming a 30 ml batch size) = 0.9ml.
You did 0.033 x 100 which you would only do if your batch was 100ml, and in which case it could comprise 3.3% of your entire mix. Its easy to forget what value is what when working with drops/mls/percents etc.!
So the advise to stay at or under 1% is perfect!
Edit: thank you for this question, as I was always a little confused about the same thing! My mental math always led me to a similar conclusion when I read "1 drop per ml" and couldn't figure out why something that SHOULD BE a small amount always seemed to comprise too much of the total percentage when I worked it out in my head. And now I know that when mixing 30ml, 1 drop per ml works out to just about 1%!
So I just started vaping Saturday and want to DIY so I know my juice is safe to vape. I was wondering what are the chemicals I should stay away from. I know there is the one in the beginner tutorial called diol or something. Anything else to stay clear of to look for when buying flavoring?
Diacetyl is what you are referring to. Acetoin/Acetyl Propionyl is another possible ingredient that can break down into Diacetyl. These are generally found in buttery creams, custards, or tangy fruits. Some companies now make alternate flavor versions for those who wish to avoid it- such as Capella Vanilla custard v2, or the TFA DX flavors.
Frankly- some people don't care and vape it anyway. The acknowledged risks are still inherent, but people accept the risks of exposure.
Food coloring is one peg down in what I like to think of as the "almost certainly not good for me to breathe" catagory. This has had less research done, but I still prefer flavorings without any added color.
Thanks for the information! I am not a chemist by any means, so a lot of these names are SUPER foreign to me. From what I gathered, anything I get from TFA seems safe - they have been in most recipes I've seen around here.
As a follow up, are the chemicals I need to worry about in the flavoring? I know that eJuice is pretty much nicotine (not using any), VG, PG, and flavoring.
TFA has Material Safety Data sheets available for their flavorings.
This Link will take you to their listings.
EDIT - I forgot to say that TFA also notes if flavors contain Acetoin, Acetyl Propionyl when you look at a particular flavor in their main listing.
Many TFA flavors contain Acetoin and Diacetyl- mostly just not in any significant concentrations. The ones that did are now also offered with a DX version that using butyric acid as a replacement- like Bavarian Cream vs DX Bavarian Cream. Lorann has some non-water soluable oil flavors to avoid- other than that you won't have any immediate issues using any Capella, TFA, Flavor West, Flavor Art or Flavoruh stuff- if it really bothers you then you should google the MSDS for a specific flavoring(this sheet will list specific makeup/ingredients).
Some colorings like titianium dioxide are a big no no. Red 20/blue 40- again, probably not good, I try to avoid them.
VG/PG will dehydrate you over time if you vape a lot.
Ironically- all of these things can cause these issues, but the one that gets glossed over, nicotine- can kill you immediately if you ingest a significant amount. If you buy 100mg/ml nicotine, I'd recomend diluting it to 50 to 60mg/ml before mixing with it, this will reduce some of the hazards of working with it.
> Lorann has some non-water soluable oil flavors to avoid
This link to the TFA website may help explain some more.
It's a bit of a wall of text but there's great info there and it is also fantastic that TFA has taken the time to address the issue.
So what I gathered from meanrockSD's reply and that link is that I should avoid Acetoin, Acetyl Propionyl, and Diacetyl, which are mainly used in custards. They can be used in other things, but primary are used as a buttery-savory flavor. Currently, if I am trying to achieve that same flavor, I should be using Butyric Acid - However, that can also be irritating when inhaled. So those 4 chemicals should be avoided as much as possible if I want to play everything safe.
If you avoid Butyric Acid you may struggle to find any creams to use.
But actually an awful lot of flavors contain one or more of those things in MINUTE QUANTITIES.
What you choose to inhale is completely up to you :-D
Have you thought about vaping unflavored juice? That would probably be the only to completely avoid those chemicals I think
So I've read quite a bit on steeping/curing mostly with hot water baths/hot rice and time.
I've heard that some flavors NEED a hot water steep for the true potential to come out and even time won't get the flavor profiles as they were intended. I've also heard that heat can kill off flavor molecules (I've heard RY4s should not be given a hot bath).
I've played around a good amount but I don't trust my tongue lately since I'm a chain vapor. Anyone have insights on some flavors that MUST have a hot water bath in order to taste right?
I've searched a few places but wanted to see if someone has tested this with single flavors and have done a comparison (such as mixing 5% single flavor with hot bath vs time steep).
Thanks!
I don't know any that require heat - my experience is simply that heat CAN speed the waiting process up. The end result for me was the same, but warm agitation shaved a bit of time off the end result.
ATTENTION NEW DIYERS
Please listen to my story.
I, like you all, started measuring drops. I got each flavoring in it's own dropper bottle, so just counted drops straight from each individual bottle. It was easy. I created more than 15 recipes that were pretty good, but I found the consistency sadly lacking. It was a little frustrating to make 2 bottles of banana pudding and have each bottle taste different, but I lived with it for awhile.
Eventually, I tired of counting 120 drops of a single flavor into a 30ml bottle, and after reading all the more experienced mixers on this forum (and others) talk about how easy and quickly they made juice by weight, I decided to take the plunge and ordered this AWS LB-501 scale, (on sale for $29.99 right now).
Using this scale was now causing me a problem. My banana pudding now tasted like plastic. NONE OF MY RECIPES WORKED ANYMORE. Everything was way overflavored. All my recipes called for 20%+ flavoring. I had to go back to the drawing board with Every. Single. One. The problem was twofold. First - every dropper tip is a little different, so the same flavor with two different tips gets slightly different results. Second, the surface tension of each flavor is different, so different flavors produced different drop sizes. TPA Ripe Banana, for example, has lower than average surface tension, so drop sizes are smaller. On the other end is VG, where drop sizes are huge. By measuring by weight, you eliminate the inaccuracy of your individual bottles or syringes, ultimately producing a superior, easily replicated juice.
That was 4 weeks ago. Now I can whip up a 10ml bottle in under 10 minutes. I no longer tediously count drops, I just try and hit my targets. Things are far more consistent, quicker and easier than ever now. Start mixing by weight as soon as possible. You won't regret it!
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